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Science

House Plants Have Little Effect on Indoor Air Quality, Study Concludes (newatlas.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
New research from a duo of environmental engineers at Drexel University is suggesting the decades-old claim that house plants improve indoor air quality is entirely wrong. Evaluating 30 years of studies, the research concludes it would take hundreds of plants in a small space to even come close to the air purifying effects of simply opening a couple of windows. From a report: Back in 1989 an incredibly influential NASA study discovered a number of common indoor plants could effectively remove volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the air. The experiment, ostensibly conducted to investigate whether plants could assist in purifying the air on space stations, gave birth to the idea of plants in home and office environments helping clear the air. Since then, a number of experimental studies have seemed to verify NASA'a findings that plants do remove VOCs from indoor environments. Professor of architectural and environmental engineering at Drexel University Michael Waring, and one of his PhD students, Bryan Cummings, were skeptical of this common consensus. The problem they saw was that the vast majority of these experiments were not conducted in real-world environments.

To better understand exactly how well potted plants can remove VOCs from indoor environments, the researchers reviewed the data from a dozen published experiments. They evaluated the efficacy of a plant's ability to remove VOCs from the air using a metric called CADR, or clean air delivery rate. "The CADR is the standard metric used for scientific study of the impacts of air purifiers on indoor environments," says Waring, "but many of the researchers conducting these studies were not looking at them from an environmental engineering perspective and did not understand how building air exchange rates interplay with the plants to affect indoor air quality." Once the researchers had calculated the rate at which plants dissipated VOCs in each study they quickly discovered that the effect of plants on air quality in real-world scenarios was essentially irrelevant. Air handling systems in big buildings were found to be significantly more effective in dissipating VOCs in indoor environments. In fact, to clear VOCs from just one square meter (10.7 sq ft) of floor space would take up to 1,000 plants, or just the standard outdoor-to-indoor air exchange systems that already exist in most large buildings.
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House Plants Have Little Effect on Indoor Air Quality, Study Concludes More

House Plants Have Little Effect on Indoor Air Quality, Study Concludes

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  • Honestly, I'd rather just have windows that opened but office building designers seem determined that sealed up windows and then adding a "exchange system" is somehow better :(

    • What happens if I work in an office where the windows are all sealed up, but they don't have any air exchanger? (Older building, maybe a 90s build. Probably before all those fancy ASHRAE/etc standards came out.) I've verified it's a crappy situation with my own CO2/VOC/etc meter.

      Should I ask for a raise as compensation for a poor work environment, or just change jobs?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        You should probably get out of there before you are negatively affected by mold, assuming there's any appreciable amount of humidity. There are standards for room air changes per hour, it sounds like they are not being met in your office.
        Disclaimer: I volunteer with ASHRAE.

    • In some ways it is. An air exchange can include a filter and it’s much harder for someone to accidentally leave it open. It’s also much harder for Eric Clapton’s kid to fall out of an air exchange system that’s been accidentally left open.

      I’d rather have an office with a nice open air area with some greenery or even a bio dome system if that’s more feasible.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        It’s also much harder for Eric Clapton’s kid to fall out of an air exchange system that’s been accidentally left open.

        To be cynical about it, that also probably lowers the suicide rate in the office, where it could be considered a workplace injury eligible for AD&D and potentially inviting lawsuits by the family.

    • Honestly, I'd rather just have windows that opened but office building designers seem determined that sealed up windows and then adding a "exchange system" is somehow better :(

      The way companies treat employees these days, the companies do not want the danger of windows that open.

      Employees might be tempted to open the windows and jump out, instead of working any longer at the company.

      • That's only a problem if you hire dumb employees.

        Smart employees are much worse - they're tempted to open the window and throw the boss out.

        • That's only a problem if you hire dumb employees.

          Smart employees are much worse - they're tempted to open the window and throw the boss out.

          I see someone has been reading BOFH.

    • It's to comply with newer green building regulations [wikipedia.org]. An open window is also heat (or air conditioning) energy that's escaping outside, and thus frowned upon or even prohibited by these building codes. To change the air without transferring heat requires running it through some sort of exchange system which transfers the heat to/from the outgoing air from/to the incoming air.

      • An open window is also heat (or air conditioning) energy that's escaping outside, and thus frowned upon or even prohibited by these building codes.

        Then only run the AC or heat on the hottest and coldest days. the rest of the year some variance would be welcome.

  • Specially engineered plants (Score:3)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @06:58PM (#59396022)
    Is it because plants suck or the plants we’ve tested suck. We’ve been able to use selective breeding, atomic gardening, or even genetic engineering to produce incredible food crops. I wonder if the same could be done for other types of plants.

    There isn’t a lot of incentive to do it when there are much more effective options, but it seems like the type of thing you might want for space travel where opening a window isn’t an option.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by bob4u2c ( 73467 )

      even genetic engineering

      Dear lord, we have a guy that wants to create an Audrey 2!

      Hasn't Hollywood taught us anything?
      Swamp Thing, Little Shop of Horrors, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, The Happening, The Day of the Triffids, Invasion of the Body Snatchers! Those are just the films I know off hand!

    • Or just maybe, because a 20lb of assorted houseplants (not counting the dirt) can't process nearly as much air as a single 200lb person?

    • Outdoors, that energy comes from sunlight. They use that energy to convert CO2 and H2O into O2 and sugar (which when glued together forms carbohydrates and cellulose).

      Indoors, there is no sunlight. And the energy level of indoor lighting is just a fraction of that of sunlight. So plants kept indoors are basically on a starvation diet, processing a minimum amount of CO2 and other things in the air like VOCs that they need to stay alive. This isn't like a cat or a dog or a human, where you can feed it

      • My houseplants are in front of south-facing windows, you insensitive clod! (And I live in the Northern Hemisphere).

        Actually, that's a lie, we don't have any houseplants right now, because there's no room for them. But that's where they were located in our prior residence.

    • Is it because plants suck

      No it's because plants *don't* suck. The fundamental point is that plants actually do very little to air in general, much the same as you put a cat and a person in two same sized air tight chambers, the person will die long before the cat due to the massive difference in effect these two very differently sized living things consume oxygen.

  • From the NSS Institute (Score:3)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @07:08PM (#59396042)
    A houseplant that's maybe 12" high that at best lives a sedentary life, just sucking up water and smoking that sweet sweet CO2, that over a day may produce 1 lungful of O2. No Shit Sherlock, who whoulda thunk it doesn't contribute shit to the overall atmosphere. Don't confuse that with the overall ambience, which is a different thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spitzak ( 4019 )

      This is not about CO2. The plants were claimed to be absorbing indoor pollutants, this study indicates that they don't absorb much of them.

      CO2 indoor concentration is so many times higher than outside that it probably does not matter that plants absorb much. Also if they are not growing they emit just as much when it is dark.

      • Coincidentally I never understood how they *could* absorb a lot of them. They'd have to be magical for that or something. Turns out I was wondering correctly, it seems.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AHuxley ( 892839 )
          Really powerful 1980's science says so. Until not so much...
          As good as this years rush for ever more climate change science news :)
          • Climate change science at least makes sense. But my plants never seemed to get dirtier than anything else in the room, and on the microscopic level, I couldn't get why they'd try to poison themselves for my benefit.

      • No, the study is just clickbait saying that air purifiers absorb more than plants. They don't actually question the data from the other study's at all; the plants remove the amount of pollutants that they said they do, it just isn't very much.

    • the overall ambience, which is a different thing.

      It really ties the room together.

  • Plant's advantages (Score:3)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Friday November 08, 2019 @07:18PM (#59396070)
    The benefit of plants in your house or office is to lower your stress level. That is better than nothing.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Yeah and what happened? Let this be a lesson to all. If you go around from apartment to apartment carrying an aglaonema you will blow yourself up with a grenade to kill a corrupt police official.

        Get yourself a peacelily instead.

  • I don't think people have them for purposes other than being there. People like them. I miss my vine that covered some pipes, but I have a brown thumb.
    • Yeah, who actually thought plants would purify the air? I would never have even thought that, the exchange rate of a plant is pretty tiny, it would make no perceptible difference.

  • Having plants inside is about feeling good and having something else alive in the same room.

    --
    Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. - Robert Louis Stevenson

  • New research from a duo of environmental engineers at Drexel University is suggesting the decades-old claim that house plants improve indoor air quality is entirely wrong.[...]

    Back in 1989 an incredibly influential NASA study discovered a number of common indoor plants could effectively remove volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the air.

    I can tell they remove particulates from the air, because the plants get dusty faster than their surroundings. Maybe they don't reduce VOCs, but so what? That doesn't me

  • ... I really don't care any more.

  • There's a whole list of good reasons to have house plants, and "improves the air quality" wouldn't even make the first page.

  • I have an office that's about 200 sq feet, with several varieties of plants including a money tree, a banana tree, cacti, bamboo, ivy, and others. It's a small space with a mini-split, so the air would be pretty dry (below 30% humidity) without a humidifier. These plants regulate the humidity in said office even in the middle of winter though, consistently keeping the humidity levels around 45% to 50%.

    So, having said that, if they're able to impact the humidity of my office, why is it such a leap for th

  • Anyone with allergies will tell you this is bullshit.

  • These scientist reproach NASA that they wanted to use plants in a spacecraft to clean the air.
    They found out you should just as easily crack a window open in the spaceship.

  • "The CADR is the standard metric used for scientific study of the impacts of air purifiers on indoor environments," says Waring, "but many of the researchers conducting these studies were not looking at them from an environmental engineering perspective and did not understand how building air exchange rates interplay with the plants to affect indoor air quality."
    [...]
    Air handling systems in big buildings were found to be significantly more effective in dissipating VOCs in indoor environments. In fact, to cl

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